The Disability Tax: Medical Bills Remain Inaccessible for Many Blind Americans
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A Missouri man who is deaf and blind said a medical bill he didn’t know existed was sent to debt collections, triggering an 11% rise in his home insurance premiums.
An insurer has suspended a blind woman’s coverage every year since 2010 after mailing printed “verification of benefits” forms to her California home that she cannot read, she said. The issues continued even after she got a lawyer involved.
And another insurer kept sending a visually impaired Indiana woman bills she said she could not read, even after her complaint to the Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights led to corrective actions.
Health insurers and health care systems across the U.S. are breaking disability rights laws by sending inaccessible medical bills and notices, a KHN investigation found. The practice